I never thought I'd see the day I say this. But Vista's new interface is very impressive. Hey, I'm only giving credits where it is due.

I actually agree with you. The attention to detail (note the glow on the window buttons actually *starting* in the middle and moving outwards!) is simply stunning. The new alt+tab behaviour is cool too, just like the taskbar previews. Another noticable improvement is that when an app hangs, you cannot paint it's window anymore. Really cool!

Of course it remains to be seen if all this actually makes it more usable.

"...it prevents windows from appearing hung. I mean, the app will be hung if it's hung but it'll look better. It'll help with the overall perceived reliability of the system."

Amongst the improvements, this doesn't sound too clever. Wouldn't it be better to know when something has crashed? Then again, making people think the system is OK when it's not will be good for sales I guess.

I don't think they thought about it that way. For example, Adobe Illustrator is hanging on me every few minutes or so and if you try clicking anything in it it will brok up the rendering prodfucing some white lines and stuff like that. For some reason even the systray becomes borked, because of it. It's only after I close AI and hit F5 that the screen becoems normal again. In Vista the application won't be able to do that. In my example AI wouldn't be able to bork systray or the AI window itself, but it would still appear hung.

btw, I think I've seen a screenshot of Vista showing when an application is not responding. A small popup box apears at the close button (x) of that application stating that the app is not responding etc...